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Tag Archives: Australian aborigines

Using genetic analyses, it’s currently believed that the first wave of modern humans who migrated out of Africa did so around 90-130K years ago. Those first wanderers reached Australia perhaps 50-70K years ago, and today’s Australian aborigines are probably descendants of those people, and if not the very first (we have 65K year old artifacts galore but as yet no DNA) then certainly of peoples who came in soon afterward. There were other waves–perhaps pulses is a better term–of people out of Africa afterward. Each “wave” was probably a remarkably small number of people, maybe a few hundred, maybe even less, a few dozen, who then eventually branched out across the world. Some of those additional waves may have also reached Australia, or perhaps not. They’re still arguing that one. Genetics, though, does show that aboriginal Australians descend in large part if not entirely from that first wave. We know this because at the end of the last ice age the land bridge between Asia and Australia was submerged, creating first the Indonesian archipelago and then, as the oceans rose further, separating New Guinea from Australia about 8,000 years ago. Australians, among the first people to leave Africa, became isolated at the end of the earth in Australia, and had very little to do with the rest of humanity for thousands of years until Captain Cook came nosing around. Their culture evolved in splendid isolation. Dreamtime.

I’m bringing this up because when you look at Australian languages, they seem about as far afield from the Indo-European languages–which includes English–as you can imagine. The last time someone spoke something that was the root of both an Australian aboriginal language and English was probably somewhere in East Africa, perhaps 150,000 years ago or more, almost to the point where modern humans–Homo sapiens–emerged and began speaking language. There’s no way to figure this out, of course, I’m just extrapolating from the timelines genetics and the sparse archeological record have given us. And I’m thinking in terms of the small family bands or perhaps tribal groups radiating across Africa for maybe fifty thousand years before some eventually crossed the Red Sea into Arabia and kept walking. At some point in there the people that became Australians would have lost contact with the people who became, say, Europeans. It may have been a family splitting up. A hunting band. Maybe a scattered group of related bands. Whatever. We last had contact with each other somewhere in Africa well over a hundred thousand years ago. Which gives you an idea of just how separate English is from any of the languages spoken by indigenous Australians. The last time we could understand each other was maybe six thousand, or maybe ten thousand, generations ago. You can almost picture that, ten thousand generations. Think back to your own grandparents, and their grandparents, and then their grandparents and on and on and back and back, time measured in people’s lifespans. You could talk to your grandparents, and–if you spoke the same language–perhaps their grandparents. You make yourself understood to their grandparents. It might get a little iffy after that. I’d have a helluva time making myself understood to an English speaker twenty generations ago, when everyone really did talk like Shakespeare. Go back another twenty generations before that and it would get even harder. Another twenty generations beyond that (i.e., sixty generations ago) we’d just stare at each other, confused. And that is only 1500 years. Multiply that by a hundred to get back to where a proto-European and a proto-Australian could understand what each other was saying.

But to really get an idea, here’s a page full of transcriptions of sayings in various Australian languages. They all pretty much sound as they look, the double r’s are rolled or trilled, sort of halfway between Spanish and German, and the g is hard, so ng sounds like the ng in ungood and not like the ng in orange. Never mind the grammar–it varies wildly across the continent, which still has 150 spoken native languages (down from perhaps as many as 750 before the Europeans came), though many, like Bardi, have less than twenty remaining speakers. And like all small languages, the grammar is more complex than a language spoken by millions of people (the more speakers, the simpler the rules become). But just looking at these phrases, and sounding them out, and seeing how utterly alien they appear to us, you really get a feel for the span of time it’s been since our shared ancestors went their separate ways. My ancestors and the ancestors of aboriginal Australians have been speaking mutually unintelligible tongues almost since Homo sapiens appeared on the planet. A hundred thousand years maybe? A hundred and fifty thousand? Two hundred thousand? Who knows. But if I’d seen two people adding sticks to a small fire, I’d say they were kindling a fire. A Bardi speaking Australian who saw the same thing would say ingoorrooloorrloorroona noorroo. That’s what a couple hundred thousand years will do to mutual communication.

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My latest writing at: Brick Wahl

Was out on the moondeck around midnight and the silence was something. A solitary siren set off the coyotes and for a minute there I could have been in the middle of the Mojave, but the siren keened away and the coyotes shushed. A bat fluttered by. An owl flapped from one tree to another […]

This Canter’s Rueben ought to make up for all the vegetarian meals I usually eat. I suppose the pickle is the vegan part. And there’s enough oil in these onion rings for a whole weekend of orgies. Slippin’ and a slidin’, gotta wash my hands. The pickle just squirted all across the table, iPad, and […]

My latest writing at: Brick's Picks

Found this in my drafts, completely forgotten. I only found it again when one of these bits–Walking About–wound up on a tee shirt in Australia. Seems I had once spent a late evening on YouTube digging up old tunes from my past life and writing about them. They’re not for the jazzbos, most of ’em, they’re […]

Staying in tonight, we’re going to see Chuck Manning at the York tomorrow. Been listening to ancient radio comedies all week. Amazing how weird and conceptual and hysterically funny this stuff was, TV comedy has rarely come close, and never gotten beyond it. The mind’s eye can visualize so much more than our meager real […]

My latest writing at: Brick's Politics

Hoover flags, they called empty pockets in 1931, and they became emblematic of Herbert Hoover’s abject failure in dealing with the Great Depression. I suspect homemade face masks are becoming Trump’s Hoover Flags.

I admit it, I voted for Mike Bloomberg. I think it was the last one hundred mailings that won me over. Not that I read any of them. But there were so many it just had to be presidential. Liz Warren only sent a few, which I read. She had my vote for the first […]

My latest writing at: Brick's History

Finally saw The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie last night. Maggie Smith, gorgeous locations, etc. It seemed a rather nothing story about an incredibly irritating Scottish teacher and her perfect little students. La creme de la creme she called them. She worshipped beauty, art, perfection, punctuality. It began to get more interesting. A few plot twists and […]

Interesting bit in The Third Man that few probably pick upon anymore…after Holley Martins (Joseph Cotten) first meets Baron Kurtz, they go walking down the sidewalk together. Kurtz has vaguely Mediterranean features and it dawned on me that the character might be Jewish. It had never occurred to me before because Austria had been thoroughly […]

My latest writing at: Brick's Brain

That ephemeral sensation of newness is gone now. It lasts a day, maybe two, and then disappears like a morning fog. I’d never written about it before. If I hadn’t written about it I’d never even know about it, it’s so fleeting, no more permanent than a dream you can’t remember the details of an […]

After a dozen hours of sleep the brain has settled down nicely. Realized I hadn’t been outta the house for a couple days and went to take down some bags to the bins and get the mail and I had this inexplicable trepidation. When I went outside it was like I’d never done it before. […]